KGB's secret plan

Thursday

Jan 3, 2008 at 2:00 AMJan 3, 2008 at 10:19 PM

A previously secret plan has recently been discovered. It was buried in the files of the former KGB. Once the Soviet Union disintegrated, the spy agency's archives were pried open for inspection. This plan, concocted in the mid-1980s, was one of the last items to be revealed

Stew Goodwin

A previously secret plan has recently been discovered. It was buried in the files of the former KGB. Once the Soviet Union disintegrated, the spy agency's archives were pried open for inspection. This plan, concocted in the mid-1980s, was one of the last items to be revealed.

There is no surprise in the fact that the Soviets hoped to destabilize and discredit the United States. What does surprise is the subtlety and audacity of their effort. The opening salvo of the KGB's plan was financial.

Seductive advertising was placed in our media through dummy corporations. The intent was to encourage Americans to spend and borrow. From the KGB's point of view the way to ruin capitalism was for our citizens to run up record levels of debt, preferably with escalating interest rates, and for the national savings rate to plunge into negative territory.

It would be an added plus for them if we would use the borrowed funds to buy non-durables instead of investing in infrastructure.

Should these conditions develop the KGB felt that our country would encounter economic difficulties that could weaken the dollar, undermine our global leadership, and raise the cost of imports heralding inflation. If by some stroke of luck these conditions should be accompanied by reckless use of energy with no thought to conservation, this country might lose control of its own economic destiny.

The final piece of the KGB's financial strategy involved benefits. The agency employed all of its influence, which was greater than we had suspected, to lull us into potentially lethal complacency. Its aim was to get our government to grant generous social benefits. Then it would persuade our citizens to take those obligations for granted, but not fund them. If it worked, this strategy would create a time bomb, softly ticking until an explosive wave of retirements hit the system.

This approach was so unlike the shoe-pounding rhetoric of Nikita Khruschev that it went undetected by our counterspies. Gradually at first, and then at an accelerating rate, we fell into the KGB's insidious trap.

But finances were only the tip of the iceberg. The second part of the secret master plan was even more daring and complex. It was so challenging that the Soviets were only able to activate a portion of it.

This portion dealt with how to discredit the United States in the eyes of the world. In essence it was a reaction to advice published in 1984 by George Kennan, the old Soviet foe who was the architect and predictor of Cold War victory.

"Let us present the world outside our borders the face of a country that has learned to cope with crime and poverty and corruption, with drugs and pornography; let us prove ourselves capable of taking the great revolution of electronic communication and turning it to the intellectual and spiritual elevation of our people. Let us do these things, and others like them, so we will not need 27,000 nuclear warheads and a multibillion dollar defense to make the influence of America felt in the world beyond our borders."

Afraid that our government might heed Kennan's advice the KGB redoubled its efforts to make the most powerful, most generous nation in the world seem arrogant, self-centered, uninterested in international cooperation, but at the same time vulnerable. They schemed to dislodge us from our position on the moral high ground, portraying us as willing to abandon the rule of law by following policies of fear dedicated solely to our own interests.

They intended for us to be depicted as hoarders of resources gathered by rapacious corporations who exploited poorer nations. The KGB hoped to depict our vast defense budget as going for the support of a military ranging far and wide on wars of choice that rained destruction upon civilian populations.

Fortunately for us, the Soviet Union dissolved before the KGB's plan could be implemented.